Long before they became mega movie stars, JoshDuhamel and Ashton Kutcher were simply two Midwestern boys trying to make it in the modeling world.

In 1997, North Dakota-raised Duhamel beat Kutcher for the title of Male Model of the Year. At the time, the Safe Haven star described the achievement as "the happiest moment of my life." In hindsight, Duhamel can't help but laugh at his former self.

"We joke about it all the time," Duhamel, 39, says of Kutcher, 34, in an interview with Yahoo's OMG!. "When I see him, we always have a good laugh about it. We were so into it. We thought we were so cool. It was like a real-life Zoolander."

Though Iowa native Kutcher placed second, he was the one who first became a household name. "We went two different ways. He like immediately shot to stardom after: he did a big Calvin Klein campaign and That '70s Show, and I struggled for a number of years," Duhamel explains. "But now we laugh about it."